Reverence for the Relations of Life

Frank M. Oppenheim

Description

Josiah Royce and William James lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Irving Street, just two doors apart, and Charles Peirce grew up only blocks away. John Dewey was born and educated in nearby Vermont. These four great thinkers shared more than geographic space; they engaged in a series of formative philosophical discussions. By tracing the interactions of Royce (1855–1916) with James, Peirce, and Dewey, Oppenheim "re-imagines pragmatism" in a way that highlights the late Royce's role as mediator and favors the "seed-plant" image of O. W. Holmes, Jr., over the corridor image of Papini.

Josiah Royce emphasized that communities of all sizes—ranging from families to towns—needed "reverence for the relations of life" not only to thrive but to survive. This theme permeates the dialectic of Royce’s interactions with Peirce, James, and Dewey. Oppenheim analyzes the agreement and disagreement of these thinkers on the method and content of philosophy, skepticism and intelligibility, and nominalism and intentionality, as he uncovers their varied stances toward transcendent Reality.

Oppenheim repudiates Ralph Barton Perry’s tactic of using Royce as a foil to display James positively, by offering a richer portrait of Royce. Oppenheim calls attention to Royce’s "doctrine of two levels" and its effects on the distinction of human and super-human, by showing the contrast of Royce’s "third attitude of will" against two primarily self-centered attitudes of will, and by examining the roles of Spirit, Community, and semiotic process in Royce’s late thought.

Sujets

• Philosophie
• Épistémologie
• Éthique et morale
• Philosophie moderne
• Philosophie moderne
• Movements
• Surveys
• Modern
• PHILOSOPHY
• Philosophie et théologie
• Modern history
• Suffix (name)
• Josiah Royce
• Pragmatism
• Community
• History
• JR
• Obermodern-Zutzendorf
• William James
• Spirit
• John Dewey

Informations

• Publié par: University of Notre Dame Press
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780268159870
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

REVERENCE
FOR THE
RELATIONS
OF LIFE
REVERENCE
FOR THE
RELATIONS
OF LIFE
Re-imagining
Pragmatism via
Josiah Royce s Interactions
with Peirce, James ,
and Dewey
FRANK M. OPPENHEIM, S. J.
Copyright 2005 by University of Notre Dame
Notre Dame, Indiana 46556
www.undpress.nd.edu
All Rights Reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Oppenheim, Frank M., 1925-
Reverence for the relations of life : re-imagining pragmatism via Josiah Royce s interactions with Peirce, James, and Dewey / Frank M. Oppenheim.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-268-04019-2 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-0-268-15986-3 (paperback)
1. Pragmatism. 2. Royce, Josiah, 1855-1916. 3. Peirce, Charles S. (Charles Sanders), 1839-1914. 4. James, William, 1842-1910. 5. Dewey, John, 1859-1952.
I. Title.
B832.067 2004
144 .3 0973-dc22
2004024689
eISBN 9780268159870
This book is printed on acid-free paper
This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail] .
Dedicated to
David J. Hassel, S.J.
and
Helen C. Swift, S.N.D. de N.
who deeply revered the relations of life
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
Introduction: Reverence for the Relations of Life

PART I Royce and Peirce
1
We and Royce Meet Charles Peirce
2
The Thought of the Late Peirce and Royce: Different? Alike? Both?
3
Peirce and Royce as Prophetic Pragmatists

PART II Royce and James
4
William James and Josiah Royce
5
Some Radical Conflicts between the Late Royce and James
6
Psychological Attitudes and Some Deep Philosophical Choices
7
Their Late Theories of Knowledge
8
James s Late Metaphysics or Philosophy of Radical Empiricism
9
Royce s Late Metaphysics
10
The Late Pragmatisms of James and Royce
11
The Late Ethics of James and Royce
12
Their Late Philosophies of Religion

PART III Royce and Dewey
13
How the Lives and Thoughts of Royce and Dewey Intertwined
14
Common Themes Uniting the Late Royce and Dewey
15
Some Chief Differences of the Late Royce and Late Dewey
16
Orientation to Religion in the Late Royce and Late Dewey
17
Religion in the Late Royce and Late Dewey

PART IV Comparative Summary
18
The Problem of Evil in Peirce, James, Dewey, and Especially, Royce
19
Epilogue: Four Philosophers Interactions on Four Central Themes
Notes
Bibliography
Index of Names
Index of Topics
Preface
William James and Josiah Royce lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Irving Street, just two doors apart. Just a few blocks away Charles Sanders Peirce, our American logician, grew up and in nearby Vermont John Dewey, a very influential American thinker, spent much of his youth. Why focus back on these people of a century ago when today we whirl around in terrorism and wars set a-swirling by ethnic clashes, globalized finance, isolating media, and the World Wide Web? Because from just these people have largely arisen the forms of thought and cultural ethos we live by today. Since the distinctive intellectual culture which Americans claim as their own arose largely from these thinkers, Americans intellectual health largely depends upon returning responsibly and critically to these roots.
In various ways Peirce, James, Royce, and Dewey emphasized the need we Americans have to balance responsibly our genuine individualism with a promotion of authentic communities. Today who needs such balance more than globally irresponsible investors who mainly seek ever-increasing returns on their global investments without caring to effect international labor reforms in slave labor sites? Or than lawmakers addicted to fringe benefits who treat the interests of big investors as more urgent than those of employees and the general public? Josiah Royce, born in a California mining town in 1855, experienced how people won or lost this balance of true individualism and dedication to community by either having or lacking a reverence for the relations of life. 1 This balance-creating reverence for the relations of life pulses through many of Royce s pages, including his famous directives on how to create high-quality community consciousness. Without this balancing of authentic individualism and genuine loyalty, the relations of life shrivel into decay.
In the Conclusion of his California , when appraising the earliest decade of our American occupation of that previously Mexican territory, Royce detected the need to start looking at life within the household, a life that called for a complete devotion to each other and the family s common good. Simultaneously, he detected the need to refuse to love mere fullness of life, that fullness which is crammed with fine and rough labors, amusements and crimes. Instead, Royce found in the family that the source of this complete devotion lay in its members reverence for the relations of life -to start with, in their awe-filled respect for family bonds. Here revealed in its true colors Royce found what he identified as the American character. This reverence also needed to be extended into one s business enterprises, into social and political life, and into the whole Social Order of state, nation, and cosmopolis. These social orders needed to respond to wider, even global, common goods, instead of irresponsibly preferring the betterment of just their own situation within the wealthier and more fortunate quarter of the human race. 2
Royce found this lesson taught by hard-learned submission to the previously despised communal order. For, as he said, a process of divinely moral significance schools us both to overcome our self-preferential disdain for the group and to discover that our highest spiritual destiny in bodily form is being fulfilled through dedication to a community that saves us from our general sense of social irresponsibility ( Calif . 499-501). In brief, Royce grasped a lesson about which de Tocqueville had earlier cautioned-that of itself democracy simply brings bodies together yet splits souls apart, unless something higher unites them. 3
During my more than four decades of studying Royce, I have learned only gradually to approach him in a wiser way-through his relations of life. In my first three studies of Royce, I focused on him as an individual. 4 That may have fit my earlier efforts to paint a portrait of Royce, seen in his own intellectual endeavors. It was almost not until the present work that I began examining Royce in his relations of life with James, Peirce, and Dewey, his three philosophical contemporaries. 5
Royce s mother, Sarah Eleanor Bayliss Royce, deserves to enter this book as its fifth major participant. Thanks to this pioneer woman s tutoring of him, Royce reached his vital insight about the reverence for the relations of life needed in healthy families and neighborhood communities. (The current need for this insight, so glaringly absent among individualistic Americans, has been documented by Robert Bellah and his fellow sociologists.) 6
Sarah Eleanor endured the most challenging of situations as a forty-niner and frontier woman. 7 Yet she survived and thrived in the rough and tough mining camp of Grass Valley, California. As a mother and teacher of her own children and as a schoolmistress for many of the miners and townfolks children, Sarah Eleanor drew strength from her reading-limited yet diverse and solid-her music, and her Bible. Amid poverty and the prolonged absences of her husband (away in mining areas) she reverently held her family together, standing strong among continuing trials. Her son Josiah could not have lived his first two decades in her presence without becoming intimately familiar with her response to life and its ills. As he himself acknowledged to a group of teachers in 1893, The one person whom I most imitated was, I suppose, my mother. She determined my ideas to take a generally theological turn. 8
With her three daughters and young Josiah, Sarah Eleanor had shared Bible readings and evangelical hymns in both Grass Valley and the Bay area. With them she had experienced an animating life in communal Christian worship. As a frontier woman, especially, she had radiated a pioneer courage and mystically rooted devotion to her family, her neighbors, and her town s solidarity against corrupting forces. His mother s outstanding example of utter sincerity and heroism inscribed upon Josiah s psyche the meaning of genuine loyalty to one s family and nurtured in it an indelible appreciation of the best in available Christianity.
As a result, throughout his life Josiah Royce kept responding by deed, if not always by explicit writing, to the witness of Sarah Eleanor, his Christian frontier lady. Between the two of them, a tension over religion became sharper in the days of Josiah s adolescence and early career. Yet in the end, Josiah s responses to his mother s faith grew into positions ever more parallel to her own, although clearly on a different plane. His seeming break with the evangelical tradition of his parents had in the end led him to a union with the purified vital core of that tradition, namely, to a union with humankind s Great Community led by the Logos-Spirit. By this latter term he designated the One whom the apostle Paul had pointed out as the life-giving Spirit, that is, the Spirit-breathing, once crucified, yet now risen Christ who lifts human individuals and groups into Beloved Communities. The late Royce believed that this Logos-Spirit is alive and at work in the hearts of all human selves, calling them to commit themselves in fellowship to serve the Great Community of humankind by reverence for the relations of life.
Besides his mother, Peirce, James, and Dewey seemed most personally interactive with Royce s intellectual de